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Dessert

Snow Souffle

A chilled gelatin dessert made with egg whites, sugar, lemon juice, and served with soft custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Gelatin and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,778 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Snow Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth.

  2. Dissolve the gelatin in hot water.

  3. Add sugar and lemon juice to the gelatin mixture.

  4. Let the mixture cool.

  5. Stir the beaten egg whites into the cooled mixture.

  6. Beat the mixture until it is white and stiff.

Mold and serve

  1. Mold the mixture.

  2. Serve with soft custard poured around it.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Gelatin + sugartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Gelatin + lemontop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,215 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-pinene (pine, resin).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Beaten into a stiff foam that gives the soufflé its light, airy structure.
Gelatin
Sets the liquid mixture so it holds its shape when molded.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the beaten mixture stay stable.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sugar.

The step that matters

Stir the beaten egg whites into the cooled mixture. If the gelatin mixture is still warm or not yet cooled and thickened, it can deflate the beaten egg whites and collapse the foam, so the dessert loses its airy light texture.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, gelatin, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, gelatin, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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